Busy Bees

The bees are really busy this evening. They particularly are attracted to this Allium.

Well under-way

A quick tour around the greenhouse and we have a Courgette plant that thinks its a triffid!. Tomatoes chasing, giving a good run for their money! A pepper plant, complete with the first fruit Aubergines A mixture of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and a pot of salad onions. In the garden there is ......

More courgettes, it is surprising the difference between the ones grown inside the greenhouse. My second lot of carrots. The monopods had the first lot! Strawberries, you cant beat picking them warm straight from the plant. More strawberries, plus potatoes and at the back shallots,

An outdoor cucumber....(I think, I got them mixed up!) Red sun Shallots, these were a freebie from T&M,This is a picture of the Crab apple tree that i bought from Ebay, and the postman , in his wisdom, folded it in half!! When it arrived in its dormant state, I splinted the damaged branches, and three out of four of them have knitted themselves together! You can just make out the splint.Two of my girls who follow me around the garden, hoping that I wiil find them tasty treats! Usually I oblidge(? that doesn't look right!) And finally Potatoes!!
See you soon, I gotta go to work now, Bye X

Its True!

Just a very quick post to brag really! Ihave picked my first courgette, grown in the greenhouse, and more exciting than that, yesterday I popped down to the allotment between the showers, had a quick look about and there was a ripe strawberry just shouting at me to eat it! I didn't have my camera with me so I have no proof of this but I promise you its true! It wasn't very big, but it was delicious. Is (was) this the first strawberry of the season, or has anyone else beaten me to it?

I'm a well trained human!

This little robin had gotten quite tame last year, and I havn't seen him for months. I was in the garden a couple of days ago, and he was hanging about. I thought maybe he wanted a top up of seed. I buy a mixed songbird mix, and usually athe starlings eat all the best bits, the suet pellets and insects, leaving only the boring plain seed. So I topped up the seed, but no, that wasn't what he was waiting for. He started flitting about, following me around the garden. Then the penny dropped! He was wanting mealworms! Live mealworms! He must have remembered that last year I was putting them out for him, and this year he has come back!! Isn't that amazing!! so i hotfooted it to the local supplier and came back with fresh lovely wriggly mealworms. He has been in and out all day so he must have babies somewhere. It is such a privilidge for me to be his human! He has trained me well!

Hotch potch and promises

This is definitely my most favourite time of year, full of the promise of longer days, shorter nights and sunshine to follow! I took advantage of the early spring sunshine to get outside and use my much neglected camera. Here follows a hotch potch, pictorial story of spring that enhanced my day.Plot 44 all ready for the onslaught of veggies just waiting for favourable conditions to permit a frenzy of transplanting!The Morello Cherry tree just waiting to burst into action!Fruit buds all ready for the signal to go..The gooseberry bush already on its way to producing sweet delicious fruit for jam making....This Cranberry bush is in its 4th year and I still hav'nt had any cranberries yet!Raspberry bushes, Joan Jay just waking out of hibernation ready to produce lots more wonderful fruitOur shed after its annual spring clean!!unforced rhubarb..........Early peas, Meteor I think.......... or could be Feltham First....... Broad beans and Blue Lake climbing beans hardening off.....onions and garlic coming along nicelymy favourite weeping cherry tree just bursting with blooms... this must be one of the most photographed tree in my albums... I never get fed up with looking at it, it is soooo prettyThe Girls enjoying a dust bath under the trampoline......Rosie stays amazingly white!! Despite chucking dirt all over herself on a daily basis!

butternut squash seedlings, my favourite discovered since allotmenteering, vegetable!What am I going to do with all these courgette plants!My favourite Narcissi.. not only very pretty, but also scented.....dont know what its called tho!Pepper plants growing away beautifully on my kitchen windowsill........

Shallots growing in a discarded storage box..............cauliflowers and kale..........tomatoes and cucumbers...............the list is endless........I think the sunshine even made my brain grow!!!! Amazing!!!!!. In the front garden I have a large palm tree of sorts that drops its long straplike leaves all over the place! I usually go around picking them all up and chuck them in the bin. I dont even bother to compost them as they are so tough. .......But today I had a brainwave.... I collected up the leaves and used them to weave around the window boxes in an attempt to strengthen the coir that had become loose and was losing compost. I think it will be a success... see for yourselves! Recycling at its best!

The leaves are really tough but look attractive too! This was such an ingenious idea I feel it should merit a posting all of its own! Scuse me while I repeat myself!!

Grow time

Although the weather has been beautifully sunny lately, the wind chill factor is a constant reminder of the time of year. It is still a tad bit early , I feel, to get much in the ground, but the greenhouse and kitchen windowsill are brimming with seedlings waiting for the ground to warm up a little. In the greenhouse I have, Aubergines, Cucumber x2 Tomatoesx2, French beans, Broad beans, Leeksx2, Scented peasx2, Lettuce, Courgettes, Cauliflowerx2, Kale, and Red cabbage! On the kitchen windowsill I have Lemon Grass, Jalapeno Peppers, Sweet peppers, and butternut Squash which has yet to put in an appearance! I think I have bought a duff packet of seeds. Can anyone give me some hints on the best way to grow cauliflower. I tried last year, but didnt have much success. I had to pick them when they were really small, about the size of a tennis ball, otherwise they just seemed to want to go to seed, or went a funny colour! Also, anyone know how to grow a monkey puzzle tree from seed? I picked up a few seeds, they are huge! I planted a couple in compost in a heated propagator, but nothing has happened. Any ideas anyone?

Bottoms up Girls!

It has been a lovely springlike day today, so I thought I would let the girls out for an hour or two to have a wander around the garden. This is Rosie enjoying a dust bath. She needs it too, she had a little mishap in the week which caused a little trauma to her comb. It kept bleeding, and the other girls wouldn't leave it alone, so there was rather a lot of blood everywhere! I had to ring Ronald Grover, the chicken man, and he told me to clean the wound, and to put an antiseptic ointment on her comb and to isolate her overnight! Have you ever tried to put sudocrem on a nervous chickens comb!! Not the easiest of tasks, but the treatment worked and next morning she was back with her girlie friends! That day she laid the biggest egg I have ever seen!!

OMG!

So today I thought she deserved a treat, so I let all the girls out for a while,

This is Peggy, looking for tasty treats,

and Lucy, my favourite already, such a calm bird and so pretty. The three amigos having a whale of a time going through the compost bin!!

Bottoms up Girls!